Closing the Year of the Eucharist

This morning we just finished 24-hrs of Eucharistic Adoration at the college I attend to mark the end of the Year of the Eucharist. I spent a lot of time yesterday and today in the presence of the Lord, and what a blessing it has been. All else pales in comparison to getting up in the middle of the night to go visit with my Lord and Savior. I am so grateful for this opportunity I was given.

To mark the closing of this year I invite you to join in my prayer. . .

May the fruits of this year be plentiful, that Faithful throughout the world would find Christ in the Eucharist, unitying themselves to His Church and His Gospel of Life through this most blessed sacrament.

May God bless the bishops as they wrap up the Synod on "The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church" and may the Faithful be attentive to their findings.

May we always look to the presence of Christ in the Eucharist that we may never forget where to find Truth. Where to find God. Where to find love. Where to find beauty. Where to find all that is good and pure.

May each person find in the Eucharist the strength to glorify God in the living of their vocation.

May we adore Christ in the most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar in all the tabernacles of the world, especially where He is most neglected and rejected.

Let us pray for those who do not know the gift of the sacramental life. Let us pray for those who have rejected this gift. Let us pray for ourselves, that we would never take the Gift of Christ in the Eucharist for granted.

Let us take the time to reflect on the teachings of the Faith found in Sacred Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium, and recorded for us in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1322 The holy Eucharist completes Christian initiation. Those who have been raised to the dignity of the royal priesthood by Baptism and configured more deeply to Christ by Confirmation participate with the whole community in the Lord's own sacrifice by means of the Eucharist.

1323 "At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet 'in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.'"[133]

1324 The Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life."[134] "The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch."[135]

1325 "The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit."[136]

1326 Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.[137]

1327 In brief, the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking."[138]

Thank-you Lord Jesus for humbling yourself to meet with us, your most unworthy servants, that we may be united to you in this life through the Eucharist.